Bear Necessities: Matt Eberflus explains where his team needs to improve

With the Bears sitting at 2-4, there’s plenty of improvement needed on all sides of the ball.

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The Chicago Bears had a mini-bye week following their Thursday night game in Week 6, which allowed head coach Matt Eberflus and his coaching staff to zero in on areas of improvement.

Eberflus said players met with their position coaches on Tuesday to discuss their performance in the first six games of the 2022 season.

“It’s really about fundamentals and technique when you’re talking to each player,” said coach Matt Eberflus. “How can he improve on his run technique, his pass technique, his alignments? Is he getting his alignments down? His assignments, the keys, the techniques, all those things are important because that creates cleaner football and cleaner execution for our football team.”

With the Bears sitting at 2-4, there’s plenty of need for improvement on all sides of the ball.

On offense, the passing game and red zone offense have been the two biggest concerns. Chicago is averaging 122.8 passing yards per game, which is the worst in the NFL. After starting the season as one of the best red zone offenses, the Bears are scoring touchdowns on 46.67 percent of their red zone possessions, which ranks 28th in the league.

“Everybody knows we’ve been running the ball really well on offense,” Eberflus said. “We need to improve our passing game. In situations, we need to improve. We know that, so we’re going to work diligently to get that done.”

On defense, the issue has been the run defense. Chicago has been one of the worst run defenses in the NFL all season, allowing as much as 189 rushing yards per game. They’re coming off an encouraging outing against the Commanders where they allowed just 126 rushing yards. Now, the Bears are averaging 163 rushing yards per game, which ranks 29th in the league.

Another concern has been a lack of a pass rush, where the Bears have just 11 sacks through six games, which is tied for 23rd in the league.

“We hadn’t stopped the run as well as we wanted to over the first six games, but we played some pretty good pass defense,” Eberflus said. “We don’t have the sack numbers we want to have. Part of that is a function of getting them in the right down and distances to stop the run. And we have to get better situationally there too, third down and red zone.

“We know where we’re strong and we know where we have to improve, and we’re going to work hard to do that and put our minds together. So we’ll see where that goes. It’s a week-to-week basis in this league. Every week has got a set of challenges to it: the personnel on the other side, your personnel, how they match up to it, what you can take advantage of and how you can win the football game.”

There are still 11 games left this season for the Bears to improve upon these areas. After all, this season is about growth and development more than winning.

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